Editor’s note: If reading about Dylan Farrow’s account of Woody Allen’s abuse is overwhelming you this week, we encourage you to scroll down to the happy-looking video of Jimmy Fallon dancing with some Muppets.

What began as a wave of empowerment after the New York Times published Dylan Farrow’s open letter about being sexually abused by her father, Woody Allen, quickly turned into long week of outrage and feeling alienated from people I know who posted pieces and rants defending Woody Allen on Facebook and Twitter, most of them either prioritizing “art!” over morality or arguing that “Mia’s crazy!” Rather than engage with that rape-cultured thinking, I posted Molly Lambert’s excellent piece about what this is really about: power. Whom we choose to believe, and why. Who gets the benefit of the doubt, and who is denied that privilege. Lambert takes the major defenses of Allen and disassembles them point by point. It was just the piece I’d been wanting. I also just kept this spot-on New Inquiry piece open, and I must have reread it twice a day all week long, every time I needed a little floatation device. “‘He said, she said’ doesn’t resolve to ‘let’s start by assuming she’s lying,’ except in a rape culture,” Aaron Bady writes, “and if you are presuming his innocence by presuming her mendacity, you are rape-cultured.”

Tavi

While many of the reactions to Dylan’s brave letter made me sick to my stomach, these articles did an excellent job of putting that feeling into words:

Zoe Zolbrod’s piece on how misconceptions about child abuse inform our reactions to this case, and vice versa.

Ann Friedman’s articulation of how our own experiences and privileges influence whether or not we believe Dylan. I have sent this one to a few guys I know who insist that being male has nothing to do with their sympathy for Woody, or nothing to do with Woody being believed over Dylan.

Dylan had the final word yesterday in response to Woody’s op-ed in his own defense. It goes through his “evidence” piece by piece, showing how it is, in her words, “the latest rehash of the same legalese, distortions, and outright lies he has leveled at me for the past 20 years.” Thank you, Dylan, for refusing to be silenced.

Yesterday was Jimmy Fallon’s last episode of Late Night before he moves on to the Tonight Show. My heart holds oodles of gratefulness to ol’ JF for having had me on to promote the Rookie Yearbooks, and for asking me in real questions about what we do, even in a short spot on a late night show. For his final goodbye, he sang the Band’s “The Weight” with the Muppets.

Other members of Pussy Riot published an open letter this week claiming that Nadya and Masha are no longer members of the group, as the women’s focus has now spread from anti-capitalist feminist separatism to prison reform, which represents a huge shift away from to the original Pussy Riot ethos. BuzzFeed published a great breakdown of the situation, called “What Does Pussy Riot Mean Now?” The article, by Miriam Elder, chronicles how Nadya and Masha became Western-media darlings (though the piece opens with calling Yoko Ono “frail,” which is clearly bullshit).

I feel like most conversations about Pussy Riot are either about one of three totally different things: Pussy Riot as they were, Nadya and Masha as they currently are, and celebrities’ reaction to the whole thing. This has got me thinking a lot about activism and accessibility. Namely, which is more accessible: having shows that are free and public, but that need to be sought out by those in the know, or participating in events that have high ticket prices and a celebrity lineup, but that is covered by mainstream media outlets that will reach a much wider audience? It’s a question I ask with no proposed solution. It’s a lot to process, especially as someone who isn’t Russian and is reading everything through a cultural disconnect, but, regardless, what I know is definitely important is paying attention to the messages that Nadya and Masha are trying to spread.

This awesome photo set by Kristina Podobed shows how American culture, as portrayed by films like Clueless, The Parent Trap, and Home Alone, influenced the lives of her and her peers as they grew up in Odessa, Ukraine.Emma S.

Maybe it’s because I’m a nosy younger sister who has always wanted to be up in everyone else’s business, but I cannot get enough “behind the scenes” information. Vulture does a really great job of satisfying my fix for this kind of thing—not only with their great “anatomy of a scene” feature, but sometimes they also post things like this: the director of Mean Girls on “10 Juicy Stories, 10 Years Later.” That headline is like catnip for me, and the stories themselves are pretty good, including that the studio wanted to give them an R rating for including a line about a girl having a wide-set vagina.

Until a few days ago, literally all I knew about cowboys was from Brokeback Mountain. This series of photographs by Peter Bryne shows modern-day cowboys doing actual cowboy stuff, like breaking in horses, putting down wounded calfs (don’t look if you know you can’t handle that stuff), and playing guitar while sitting on a bedroll. When you live in a city, like I do, it’s sometimes hard to imagine how varied and wild life can be. Looking at these photographs made me inexplicably happy: America is an enormous country, and I’m glad cowboys are still a part of its rich landscape. Try to look and not imagine yourself on horseback at dusk.

Our girl Brodieinterviewed director John Waters this week about his writing process and the time Justin Bieber told him “Your ’stache is the jam” (!!!), among other things. I love hearing that one of my idols doesn’t feel like writing sometimes and has to remind himself that you gotta power through to make something great. Waters also says that One Direction can go to hell, which, as you can imagine, was stress-inducing for Brodie, but you could never tell, because she totally CRUSHED this interview.

The 21-year-old Atlanta rapper Young Thug gets snaps this week for nonchalantly wearing a leopard-print dress in a photo shoot (and on Instagram). The Fader broke the image to the larger world, calling Thug the “populist version of Kanye” in honor of his gender-crossing style acumen. Our question: Does this mean we can call a 2014 moratorium on half-baked articles proclaiming the startling emergence of queer rappers? Regardless of Thug’s sexuality (and hold your guesses on the matter because who cares) he’s just following musical legacy. Hip-hop has been, is, and will be the most flamboyant musical genre out there, of course the gays have always been involved. That said, we must give props: Thug wore the peplum to Waffle House after the shoot. Respect.

I’m very into the profiles of up-and-coming female creatives that the San Francisco/Bay Area young-lady media kingpins Browntourage have been making. The latest in their Alternative Rolemodels series is a video profile of the women behind Floss Gloss, a nail polish company that is taking over the world with its gunmetal grays, nacho-cheese oranges, and spot-on shade names (Selena Corpus Crystalina being my current fave). In this video, the duo talks about transforming from hustling art school students into businesswomen who hawk their products nationwide.

This week brought two amazing new zines filled with doodles of things close to any Rookie’s heart: meticulously drawn snacks, cute animals, equally cute aliens, and Agent Scully from The X-Files. The first, New York (and San Francisco) Tour Diary, is a comic by Gemma Correll. I’m pretty sure that besides her adventures, the author also illustrated every single thing she’s eaten during her travels (and all of it looks cuter than anything I’ve eaten this year).

The second, We Are Not Who We Are: An X-Files Zine , is a project curated by an artist Caroline Tompkins. She invited 25 illustrators from all around the world to “celebrate all that is X-Files.” Starting from the cover designed by Ji Hyun Yu, the whole zine seems to be (slightly disturbing) eye candy—and a total Scully-fest!

If you’re part of the massive group of humans that live in California, as I am, you may already know that we’re on a very alarming track to be experiencing our worst drought ever on record. Don’t panic, though! The Bold Italic put together some (entertaining) tips on saving water, many of which are tiny adjustments that just require us to think a little bit before we let the tap run. I recommend them to anyone, anywhere, but especially where I live right now—it really is one of those times where the smallest efforts make a huge impact!

The Super Bowl might be over, and I may have been one of the only people in my orbit who actually gave a crap (let alone lost her voice after the game), but I’m still feeling the victory of my home team. There are plenty of issues about which we should be critical about involving the NFL and profesh sports across the board, but Lauren Hoffman’s article “The Super Bowl Isn’t Just a ‘Mass-Marketed Eyesore’” totally hit home about the whole feelings side of my own football interest. “Sports is one of the few shared narratives we have left,” Lauren says, and when it’s a story I can feel like I belong to even in the smallest way, there’s something special there. If, like me, you enjoy getting into Big Sports Things but have a critical brain and uninterested friends, well…this’ll back you up!

Romance Was Born have launched their Autumn/Winter 2014 Collection, titled “Dream On.” In collaboration with the artists Alia Penner and Jonathan Zawada, a menagerie of wild, collage-based prints cover every square inch of fabric, incorporating patterns of marbled paint, motifs such as an amazing “gender peace” sign, text that reads “LOOK!” and even a psychedelic playground for butterflies. As usual, Romance was Born has made me want to float away on a cloud of insanely colorful fantasies. DREAM ON, indeed!

Rambling, man. Rambling and avoiding the reality. The fact that Philip Seymour Hoffman died of a heroin overdose yesterday. The sadness of drug addiction taking lives, the struggle of the drug addict to stay off the shit, to not get locked back into the groove where choices diminish, where reason no longer applies, where the will is compromised and tethered to a malignant desire. Horrendous. It’s a horrendous loss. It’s a horrendous loss when anybody dies tragically, in almost any way. Why not just say “any way”? But when you know somebody who’s been fighting I guess what at one time was a—no, let’s say at all times—a good fight against that particular bug, having experienced that bug, having lived with that bug for all of my life, having somehow kept it at bay through various methods, I understand it. I understand that. Once you surrender your will to getting high, all bets are off. You don’t know what the fuck is gonna happen.

And this guy was a talented guy. He was one of the greatest actors who ever lived. And he had this horrible struggle. And there’s nothing more bothersome, more horrible, than people going, “Eh, he made a choice.” Yeah, he made a choice, but I don’t [think he had] much control, if any, over that choice. His heart and mind were being given instruction by a fucking demon…: active drug addiction. It’s nothing to be trivialized. It’s nothing to be dismissed as some sort of bad life choice. I really think that that kind of conversation about drugs needs to be eliminated from the culture.

It’s one thing to try to “stop drugs.” That seems futile. But try to raise awareness and get people treatment so they at least have a shot. And Philip Seymour Hoffman had had some periods of sobriety. But something switched off. Something didn’t stick. Something was not there when he needed it to be there in terms of the support necessary to stop him from re-entering the dragon. From opening his soul to the demon. And now he’s gone. We lost him. We lost him to that, we lost him to that fucked-up disease. Fucked-up drug.

You know, I’ve seen a lot of people go down because of this, people in my business, people I’ve known. Some people come back. Heroin’s a tough monkey to kick, man. Seems to be the hardest, really, to re-enter life after being strung out on dope. [...] Heroin’s a bitch. Drug addiction is horrible. It’s a mental illness. It’s a real disease, and Philip Seymour Hoffman is dead, and it’s sad. It’s sad.

Just know that [...] there’s always help available if you look for it. The hardest thing about it is once you get into that mind, once you are in demon mind, your decision-making capacity, or your will to say or know that you’re in trouble, becomes somewhat compromised. You know, “I’ll kick tomorrow.” Yeah.

R.I.P., Philip Seymour Hoffman. You were great.

Having lost a few people to drugs and alcohol, this was what I wanted someone to say, so thank you, Marc Maron, for saying it so well.

I’m about to do something I hate, which is where someone dies and then every single person in the world tells you how they themselves had a “connection” to that person. I had no connection to Philip Seymour Hoffman. My feelings about him are neither important nor unusual. But they are so strong. It is odd. I don’t understand it or even really like it. For someone whom I’ve never met, he felt so much like someone I did know that whenever I saw his face—in a movie or, this one time, in real life—I felt my heart jump with recognition and with love. Actual LOVE. I didn’t just have a “crush” on him like you do on a movie star; I felt like I was IN LOVE with him like you are with a real person.

That one real-life time was when I went to a screening of Capote in Chicago in 2005 just because there was gonna be a Q&A with him (and the director, Bennett Miller) afterward and even though I never, ever ask questions in public settings like that because of my intense fear of public speaking, I felt like some force way more powerful than me had compelled me to attend and then forced me to raise my hand, stand up, and ask Philip Seymour Hoffman a question. I don’t even remember what I asked, or what he said in response, because I didn’t really care about that, and also because I was made too dizzy by getting what I did go there for: to stare into Philip Seymour Hoffman’s eyes as he looked back into mine. As ridiculous as it sounds, I am telling you that the powerful force that made me do that was true love. I know this is irrational. I know this is not real. But feelings are never rational and always real.

The worst thing about when people like me force connections between themselves and famous people who have died is that it is so, so disrespectful of the people—his longtime partner, Mimi O’Donnell; their three young children; his parents; his siblings; his friends—who really did lose someone they knew and loved. The sadness that his many fans feel this week is nothing compared with the hole that has been torn in their lives. Our thoughts and our wishes for healing go to them right now.

I think the best way for the rest of us to remember him is how we actually experienced (and, in some cases, fell in love with) him—through his unparalleled performances in movies. So here are nine of my favorite PSH scenes. (I tried for 10 but can’t find any videos of him in The Talented Mr. Ripley online. You should just go watch that whole movie.)

41 Comments

saramaritFebruary 8th, 20141:04 PM

I loved Philip Seymour Hoffman in Boogie Nights and Magnolia but above all as Lester Bangs in Almost Famous. This is a nice tribute from Patrick Fugit which gives a good insight into the kind of person and actor that Hoffman was:

I kept thinking about that clip from Magnolia where he says “this is the scene in the movie where you help me out”. Brutal. I’m still looking forward to watching more of the great films he was in, everybody dies but some people live forever.

Thank you, Rookie, for all of these links, especially for a few that say exactly what I have been thinking, and failing to successfully articulate, this week in defense of Dylan Farrow.

I do look forward to Saturday Links all week. I really do! In addition to providing me with reading material that will last long into Sunday evening, I love getting overwhelmed by all of the open tabs on my browser because I am too neurotic about not opening them all at once, for fear that one may go by unopened, forever lost in the depths of the internet.

In our justice system, we assume someone is innocent until they are proven guilty. Allen has NOT BEEN PROVEN GUILTY; therefore, for now, we should assume that he is completely innocent. He may be guilty, but until there is concrete evidence and a court decision against him, he SHOULD be given the benefit of the doubt–again, that’s how our justice system works. Also, I don’t see how believing and giving value to objective evidence–the results of a lie detector test and the opinions of impartial, experienced doctors–in favor of the Allen’s innocence is so outrageous. I don’t see the connection between that and rape culture. Why is it rape-culture-perpetuating for me to believe Allen is innocent (simply because he HASN’T been proven guilty), but not rape-culture-perpetuating for you to love Beyonce, whose song “Drunk in Love” contains the lyrics: “I’m Ike Turner, turn up, baby, no, I don’t play/Now eat the cake, Anna Mae said,/Eat the cake, Anna Mae!” ??

If you read what Tavi and Jessica wrote, they’re talking about this issue in terms of the larger culture, not just GUILTY VS. INNOCENT, and so we’re not going to debate that here (or at least not with someone who is being accusatory and aggressive).

And, while I disagree with you on more than just this one thing and am not looking for a fight about why (see above), I think it’s important to generally point out that polygraph tests aren’t admissible in court for a reason: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygraph#Validity

Hey, I’m sorry, I seriously wan’t trying to be aggressive (1. I love Rookie and 2. there aren’t italics, so I used uppercase letters), I’m honestly curious and trying to understand what seems to me, like an inconsistency (Beyonce exaltation) in the argument. The headline for this article is “We’re with Dylan,” which does imply some condemnation of Woody and imply some affirmation of his guilt. SO–even though you aren’t explicitly talking about court decisions and “guilty” verdicts, there is definitely some implied condemnation, which I think is unfair, for the reasons I stated before. Last thing, you seem to be shaping the conversation so that it’s impossible to disagree–if someone supports Allen, they are automatically contributing to rape culture and silencing Dylan. This also seems unfair.

Hey, cheaptrick76. I appreciate your comments and your desire to make sure Rookie is a place where people can feel comfortable expressing different opinions.

We posted a link to a Time article about the Beyonce lyric last week. Still, I don’t see that as inconsistent with where we stand on Dylan and Woody. We all reconcile feelings of disgust at a single lyric with feelings of love for the rest of a song, and have talked about how natural that is when you want to like culture of any kind. (You might even do so with Woody Allen’s movies, and we’re not shaming anyone for that.) But it seems unfair to me to say that that discredits what we have written about a case of sexual abuse.

You’re right that the headline implies condemnation of Woody and affirmation of his guilt. But what it does first is express that we stand with Dylan. Like Amy Rose said, this is not about the actual verdict — none of us (you, me, people reading about this case) can influence that — but about how we as a culture respond when survivors of abuse speak out. Yes, I do believe that supporting Woody is silencing not only to Dylan, but to survivors of abuse in general.

If you feel we’ve shaped the conversation to be exclusive to one stance (despite the three links to pieces devoted to just looking at the hard evidence), well, I’ve read the defenses of Woody, even his own, which irresponsibly glazed over the custody suit, and I have no desire to give any more hits to those voices. A survivor has spoken, and I think it is more crucial to listen to her. She was not ready to testify at age seven, but we can hear her speak for herself now.

I agree with Amy Rose and Tavi. This issue has brought the entire topic of rape culture to light and–though it may not be fair to Allen and Farrow–is representative of the issue at a broader scale. Given that the events in question happened many years ago, confirming their existence becomes much more confusing, but nonetheless, the issue has become representative of the recurring dispute between victim and alleged perpetrator. Regardless of what concrete events really happened, Dylan was privy to a an obviously unfavorable family situation, and she is, therefore, a victim (not to mention the entire world accusing her of lying about her life story.) If this incident represents the topic as a whole, then standing with Dylan means standing with the victim in general, as opposed to standing with the people that our society egregiously defends, regardless of the undisputed morality of sex crimes.

What happened here specifically is very hard to confirm given how long ago it happened, and, like you said, the fact that Allen is innocent until proven guilty. Siding with the Farrow and victims in general means not using the ambiguity as an excuse to automatically side with the perpetrator. At least, that’s how I see it.

I don’t know, I think ambiguity IS a good reason to side with the accused/prosecuted (in your words, “perpetrator”): the burden of proof is on the prosecutor. As long as ambiguity exists, it would be unjust to condemn the prosecuted. That’s protocol, not necessarily special privilege or egregious defense. I also think it is possible to have sympathy for Dylan and listen to what she has to say without condemning Allen.

Tavi and Amy Rose, thank you for responding to my comments–although I still disagree, I will definitely be thinking about what you wrote.

When I checked Rookie today, I was initially disgusted to see that Dylan Farrow’s open letter is the header. After a few minutes I calmed myself – it is true that this is a popular controversy that affects many aspects of our community, but what disturbed me (and still does) was that the Saturday Links is titled “Saturday Links: We’re With Dylan Edition.”
Although it seems that literature this week has been reflecting the current deadlock between did he or didn’t he, I truly think we should step back from this situation. Clearly, there are things to consider and I do not believe that we have any real information to pretend that we can decide who is right and who is wrong. On one hand, we have thoughts from Ronan and Mia Farrow, but we also have insight from Moses Farrow who states that Mia Farrow was so distraught and furious by Woody’s infidelity with Soon-Yi that she pressured Dylan to believe Woody abused her.
Instead of weighing in on did he or didn’t he, I have repeated in my head: innocent until proven guilty.
I hope that everyone keeps this in mind as we continue to see more news on this subject. Don’t take a side until you have all the cards on the table.
I’m disappointed that Rookie has so clearly asserted this opinion. We should be ensuring that women should remain clearheaded – we should not haste to judge innocence or guilt so early without the proper evidence. Our feminist beliefs or our love of Woody Allen should not convince us that we have the power to label guilty or not guilty.

Yes! I totally agree. The headline was shocking. I understood the point of the article only after reading it.

I think that it’s wrong to presume that we can assume “positions” at this point, even though this subject has been going on for about two decades. We should try seeing both sides of the story, and why Woody could be innocent too. It’s clear that we can’t have a strong opinion about their situation. But still, supporting Dylan seems to be the right thing because she is, however, a victim.

Other than this, I’ve just preordered Gemma Correl’s new zine! She is amazing. And oh, and I have about 10 link tabs too! Always happens after reading the saturday links ♡
Love,
Sofia.

so a lot of womens/feminist organisations have a policy of believing those who speak up about having survived sexual abuse and rape. i think this is no end of a good thing, because rape survivors are generally denied a voice in other parts of society. so: standing with dylan, within this safe space. the issue is that this becomes part of the wider media speculation, which is kinda fucked up because it is trial by headlines, not the legal system. my stance is, yeah, there is no perfect way to deal with this. but the legal system is generally shit anyway re:rape, and the media shockingly tends to favour famous accomplished old white men. so rookie is a voice for the other side. its important to remember we dont and cant know at this point what the truth is. but standing with the young woman at this point is something that needs to be done. anyway thats my view.

I LOVE this edition of Saturday links. Thank you so much for posting links to all these pieces and standing up against the hideous comments we read around her letter last week.
I think you do actually have a lot of perspective on the matter by trying to understand what people’s reactions said about our culture when it comes to sexual abuse. Can’t wait to dive into reading these 10 open tabs.

Also wanted to share awesome news: an M.I.A documentary filmed by long-time colleague Steve Loveridge is back on tracks and should be released this year!!! On the director’s blog is this amazing article, talking about their friendship from art school, and how M.I.A. became who she is now as an artist. Soooo inspiring…

I feel sick about all the discusion of Allen’ situation. I wish I could Know the truth and we could stand up for the real victim, but unfortunatly we can’t be sure about it. I understand that some people feel afected by title of this Saturday links, but the message here is that we must stand for kids that are scared to speak up. This edition is dedicated to all of them “We are with the victims Edition”. I think that is the most important issue.

Oh, how I love Rookie Saturdays- as always, great collection, ladies. I just saw a poster- Laverne Cox is coming here, to Missoula! Yay! Also- Gemma’s illustrations are so spot-on adorable. Thank you for the PSH tribute. I love those words about addiction and think that, like the Dylan situation, this tragedy is at least starting a potentially-productive conversation.

God this is the first I’ve heard about the Woody Allen case, very very difficult.
That Ukranian photoshoot is brilliant. Kristina is a great photographer! Hope to see more of her work in futurehttp://fashiondymond.blogspot.com

This is difficult, because I agree with a lot of this. Namely that, in our culture, women/young girls are often silenced when they try and speak out about sexual abuse – the typical arguments levelled at them being that they are attention-seeking, motivated by revenge – jump to R.Weide’s incredibly partisan article. Although this is a moral issue, sadly we cannot extricate it from its feminist implications. But I disagree with the manner in which Rookie has handled this – feel disillusioned.
I really think people ought to read this guardian article, as it perfectly articulates my feelings:http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/09/woody-allen-dylan-farrow-alleged-sexual-abuse
It is a great article as it accepts that yes, in many ways Woody Allen is a sexual predator, but does not categorically condemn him as a paedophile. The reality is that Dylan Farrow may well be telling the truth. But, we cannot, and should not, perpetuate such a condemnatory process of thought when it comes to situations like these. As a passionate feminist I can appreciate a vocalisation of support for Dylan Farrow speaking out in a forum in which she is inevitably fighting an often-losing battle. I’m aware of the ‘rich’ history of our gender-based subjugation. Yet it is also incredibly damaging to the notion of ‘human rights’ and the feminist movement as a whole to follow a line thought that necessarily presumes Allen’s guilt, refusing to look outside of the victim-predator viewpoint.
Referring to him as ‘Woody’ and taking such a personal stance implies a factual authority we just don’t have.

I don’t think you can presume both of them innocent at the same time. How do you do that? If you don’t think Dylan is a liar, then he must be guilty. That’s where I am on this. I can’t speak for the rest of our editors and staff.

Hello,
Not picking a ‘side’ in this, but I don’t think it’s so difficult to conceive of both of them as innocent at the same time: if Woody Allen did not molest D.F., and D.F. has been brainwashed since she was a kid, both their stories ‘fit,’ and they are both innocent. There’s a difference between lying and speaking what you believe to be true, but is not (Debbie Nathan’s book ‘Sybil Exposed’ offers a lot of insight into how easily children can come to believe traumatic events have occurred when they actually haven’t).

To be clear, I want women & victims of abuse to speak out about abuse and for them to be listened to. But I also don’t want to always assume they are telling the truth in a high-conflict, celebrity custody case. It sucks that this restraint contributes to rape culture but the alternative is just too risky. This case is a tragedy no matter what–either Dylan Farrow was molested as a kid, or she wasn’t and has led a brainwashed life. So she has been hurt in any case.

To be clear, I don’t ‘stand with Woody,’ or believe D.F. has been brainwashed. It’s perfectly possible, likely, even, that Woody Allen molested her. But it is possible to believe them both innocent.

I believe a common stance here including in Allen’s response is that though Dylan genuinely believes she was molested by Woody Allen, these memories were planted in her head by Mia Farrow and fabricated by years of brainwashing. As I’m sure I don’t need to tell anyone on Rookie this, though not impossible, would be an extremely extremely unusual scenario. (Although so would be a genuine sexual predator accused by just one victim.) If you took this viewpoint you could indeed believe that both are innocent.

(Now that I’ve responded to your comment) The difficulty at least for me is can you really claim to stand by some one while claiming that their memories are false? I actually think this may be one of the very (very, very, very x 100) rare cases where the above is an appropriate response. I may be wrong but I think the bottom line is always to side with the victim and I think that means truly believing her. Ultimately what we believe has no bearing on the actual truth.

I was never arguing for their simultaneous innocence: more specifically I was promoting the act of restraining from making any concrete judgement, when all we can do is review available information on the case – we were never there so can never come to a conclusion based on objectively damning evidence (there is not enough). I meant to express the opinion that she could be telling the truth, or he could be telling the truth.
Having read the judge’s report you linked me to, the only concrete opinion I can come away with is that, clearly, Allen is a bizarre, emotionally twisted character – in no way am I trying to say “hey, he’s a nice guy”. Clearly there were questionable aspects to his relationship with Dylan Farrow. Every part of me wants to just go with my emotions and agree with you.
Two things..
I grew up in an environment that was less than desirable as a child. My mother was married four times, and I had a very close relationship with her. And, as a child, the threat that I felt some of those men posed, and my feelings and anxieties about those men, cannot be separated from the age at which I was at, and the protectiveness I felt towards my mother. Now, at 21, I look back and don’t feel threatened. This is not me saying that I think Dylan Farrow was lying or brainwashed, I just know that childhood fear is incredibly powerful.
Finally, I think that the minute that the press/media start playing judge, it can also possibly distort reality, and that is injurious to both parties involved.
Thank you for responding to me, and of course I respect and value your opinion.

I’m a psychiatrist working in state prisons & I’ve sat face-to-face with felony child sexual perpetrators as an evaluator closing in on 500 separate times. Here’s the thing: you’d imagine by sheer repetition, I would have a certain “mastery” over the pathology of these individuals – and while I will argue that I am skilled and experienced at what I am expertly trained to do – I have been conned and manipulated so many times my head spins. My only advantage I have is that they cannot get away from me, and I’ll be back in their face another day.

These patients are masters of mimicking emotions they do not feel, replicators of attitudes and affects they observe in others, and “grooming” their unconscious revulsion of what they are doing onto their victims. What do I mean by this? The paradox of providing treatment to abused children is the slow process of convincing abused children that they were, in fact, not “willing” participant, for example. They did not “allow” it or “permit” it but were tricked. More importantly, however, is that for those that feel shame, who feel “dirty” or damaged, who were coerced and threatened, the task is help them understand that what they feel is the shame of their abuser – referred to as “projective identification” – and to help them “give it back.”

I don’t have enough space to adequately address “embedded manipulations” in custody battles, but my point has been to suggest that the extraordinary complexity should preclude “essays” and opinions. It is indeed a tragedy, but straightforward it is not.

Dylan Farrow spoke out, and people wrote essays so that her story would not go buried. We have linked to articles that I believe do justice to the extraordinary complexity of the situation, and to the way we as a culture talk about it. I will reiterate what has already been said multiple times in these comments: a survivor has spoken, and we express solidarity with her. Again, this is not about what we all as outsiders think of it as a legal case, but about the way survivors of abuse are consistently silenced, and how crucial it is to make sure Dylan’s story is not swept under the rug.

Just cuz you think that guy’s funny doesn’t mean he’s not capable of truly terrible things. He has a movie about fucking with a young girl’s head, it’s called Manhattan. As he’s gotten older his starlets have gotten younger. He’s married to his girlfriend’s daughter. Mia didn’t brainwash him into doing that. I just don’t get why everyone’s acting like the idea that he would take it a step further is so outside the realm of possibility. You don’t want it to be true, I get that, but Dylan wants it to be true less than you I can promise you that.

If I have learned something from my 17 years here on earth it’s that nothing is simple, nothing has only one point of view, and nobody has all the facts. Dealing with family matter publicly is very difficult partially because of how painful it is to see your most intimate secrets aired to the world and partially because everyone has an opinion with only knowing a limited part of the facts. I think it is a little brash to call people who support Woody Allen a product of ‘rape culture’ just as I think it is brash to label Dylan a liar. I think its true that famous people often use their fame to get away with more, however, they also have a lot more false claims laid on them (I’m not saying that what is happening, simply that it does). As a feminist myself I support all women and want to support women brave enough to stand against sexual harrasement, however, I think all claims against a person must be met with some level of suspicion or at the very least hesitancy. We must place ourselves in the shoes of both parties; would you like it if you opened up about your sexual abuse and were greeted with such hostility?, would you appreciate if very disparaging remarks were made about you and people assumed them to be true? In the end we don’t know all the information, and we are neither a part of their family or a judge and I think we don’t really need to have that vocal of opinions about it. We don’t know them, we don’t know what was going on, we certainly can’t be sure of what happened, and most importantly it’s not that important that we do. I wish them both well.

The video of the two Pussy Riot members and Stephen Colbert comes up as “not available in your location” because I live in Australia. But then it also says “but in case you can’t GIVE UP YOUR VEGEMITE AND MOVE TO AMERICA watch clips at thecomedychannel.com.au” and I was literally eating a vegemite sandwich for lunch as I read it hahahahahahahahha!!!!!!!!!!!

Yoo-hoo! August’s theme is GIVE AND TAKE, and we’d like to take into consideration whatever submissions you have to give about that! (Even/especially if they’re as cheesy as we just were.) Send pitches to submission@rookiemag.com. ✴

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